


gentle clicks and alien diccs

by therecognitionscene



Category: Long Exposure (Webcomic)
Genre: Alien AU, M/M, what is science, what is space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-03 18:03:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therecognitionscene/pseuds/therecognitionscene
Summary: Planetary exploration is fun and all, but what happens you run into an extraterrestrial being who wants to woo you?





	1. First Encounters

**Author's Note:**

> hey I wanna write alien au smut. yeah just a short scene full of butt stuff. that'll be good. nothin' long. yeah. lol. Lol. L. oL 
> 
> Thank you to thebermuda for being my enabler, my inspiration, and my beta! 
> 
> Long Exposure and all its content belongs to smokeplanet.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "BOY I LOVE PLANTS AND BEING STRAIGHT AND ALSO NOT GETTING COURTED BY AN ALIEN"-Jonas Wagner, young and innocent, naive

They've been on X-278A for only a day when the first incident happens.

Jonas and his fellow team members are out working in the Valley, a shallow basin of dark purplish terrain that cuts a jagged line across the planet’s surface, massive enough to be visible even from the dark reaches of space. Two large hills bracket the seemingly barren stretch of land, with the broad side of the easternmost hill providing a decent amount of shelter from whatever elements this world may throw at the exploration team. They established their base camp there, in the shadow of the little mountain, and made plans to venture down into the Valley as soon as the initial tests of atmosphere and seismic integrity are performed.

For Jonas, though, it's agony to wait. As soon as their vessel touches down on the planet’s surface he's itching to get out there and begin his work, beyond curious about what he might find on this unexplored chunk of rock.

While his teammates busy themselves collecting data about weather patterns and geologic composition, Jonas studies plants. Astrobotany isn't exactly what his adoptive parents had hoped he’d pursue as they were raising him--they'd really tried to push him towards the life of a pilot, one they thought much more dashing and fulfilling--but Jonas has always been infinitely fascinated by all things that grow and thrive. Sunny days had found the young child laying on his belly in the grass, brushing little beetles and grasshoppers off of the green blades so he could study their texture and detail through his magnifying glass. His room growing up had been a veritable jungle of ferns and flowers, all sprouting and thriving under his loving care. But his gaze had constantly turned upward, towards the sky, and he had dreamt of what strange flora might wait for him out there on distant planets.

When Sydney, their intrepid captain, finally gives them the go-ahead to venture out of their spacecraft and into the new world, Jonas is the first to step out of the lower hatch doors and onto the dusty plum-colored dirt. He smiles to himself when he looks down and sees his bootprint there in the dust, his heart thrumming with the excitement of the unknown. He turns to look at his team members, beaming, but they look far more grim and on-edge. Worried about what they might run into here, he supposes, but Jonas rationalizes it all away. The danger is par for the course with this line of work, after all, but the risk is worth it. _Discovery_ is worth it.

It takes them the better part of the day to sweep the high ground around their camp, so Jonas has very little to do. Lots of standing around, staring longingly towards where he knows the entrance to the Valley is. He scoops up a few samples of the soil into little glass vials and serous the ground for signs of vegetation, but ultimately finds nothing. His team’s initial survey of the terrain also yields very little, though in that context the lack of discovery is a good thing. There appears to be no life in the immediate area--which disappoints Jonas, but he keeps that feeling to himself--and they make plans to venture further away from camp the following day.

He’s up half the night analyzing his samples, peering at them through his microscope and subjecting them to what tests he can. In the end his work turns up nothing. With a frustrated sigh he pushes away from his desk, running a hand through his curly hair and frowning at the purple dirt as if it had insulted him. Is this planet going to be a dud too? The last few planetary bodies they’d explored and catalogued had offered nothing in the way of astrobotanical subjects, and he’d started to wonder if he should sign on to another team and journey into a different quadrant of solar system T88. He hadn’t, though, mostly because of how close he’s gotten with the ship’s medic, Lewis. Friendships are hard to maintain when you’re hopping from star to star constantly, and it’s a refreshing change to have someone who shows genuine interest in Jonas’ work and studies.

He goes to bed, exhausted but hopeful, and dreams of what tomorrow could bring.

\--------

Tomorrow doesn’t bring much of anything.

Jonas and his seven crew-members don their Ether-Suits when the sun--a lime-hued ball of burning heat-- crests the horizon and shines onto their ship. Finding a planet with a day-span roughly equivalent to that of Earth’s is always a blessing, and X-278A’s 27 and a half hour day is close enough that he can almost pretend that he’s home.

Almost.

The atmosphere is, if push came to shove, oxygenated enough that they could survive without the helmets of their suits on. But with so many unknowns still surrounding them they decide to be safe rather than sorry and stick to the recycled, filtered oxygen supplies their suits provide them. But the day is hot, and inside the suit even hotter, and by the time they crawl their way to the gap between the hills that leads into the Valley, Jonas is sweaty and grumpy.

Lewis walks beside him, chatting through their connected intercoms, completely unphased by their slow pace or the stifling heat he must be feeling too. “Sort of reminds me of knock-off Playdough,” he comments,kicking up a cloud of purple dust as they follow their companions towards the edge of the Valley. “You know, like, that crummy stuff you could get at dollar stores? All dried out and chalky. I’m not surprised nothing grows here. How could it?”

Jonas groans. “We don’t know that, Lews. There could be loads of stuff living on this planet that we just need to find. Don’t write off the possibility yet, ‘cuz I think I’d lose it if this is just another barren, boring space rock.”

“Sorry, Joey,” Lewis hums, though he still sounds altogether too chipper to soothe Jonas’ frustrations. “I wish my job was as easy as yours.” Jonas bristles at that. “Someone always seems to fall off a cliff or bump their head, and then I’m stuck doling out bandaids and resetting bones.” A cry rings out over the intercom and they see their navigator, Madison, flailing her arms as she slips down the sudden incline. Lewis sighs.”See? Mads can’t even make it through one day without tripping over something. Be right back!”

Jonas watches Lewis lope off towards the Valley entrance with a scowl, flicking off his microphone with a huff. “Easy job my butt,” he mutters darkly to himself, climbing carefully into the ravine and throwing a glare towards Lewis as he passes him and Madison. “I’d like to see you distinguish between a venomous Nightingale’s pod sac and a juvenile red Gleekeeper. See how easy _that_ is.”

Once in the Valley they all go about their own business, studying and recording and largely passing the time in silence. Jonas doesn’t mind that so much. With only the low, steady buzz of the inactive intercom in his ear, it’s easy to concentrate and focus on his work. He picks a patch of soil a small distance away from the other scientists and begins combing it over systematically for signs of flora. At first glance there’s nothing visible: no grasses, no ferns, no flowers or trees. Just purple dirt growing hot and baked in the slightly green sunlight. When he finishes with his first square, sectioning it it off with brightly colored plastic markers that he drives into the ground and connects with thin white rope, he moves on to another patch, slowly and systematically starting a grid.

Hours pass and they eventually break for lunch. It’s a relief to take the Ether-Suit off, even for just half an hour, and Jonas eats with gusto. After a quick shower and mandatory cautionary check-up by Lewis--to make sure nothing seems amiss with them after time spent outside--he suits back up and the team treks back to the Valley and their paused work.

By this point Jonas has a tidy little grid of 4x3 squares and absolutely nothing to show for it beyond those neon orange flags stuck in the purple soil. He sighs, glancing around at his fellow explorers. Now that they’ve been at work they all seem in greater spirits than they had the previous day, all of them succeeding in taking detailed notes of the temperature changes and chemical reactions of the soil and so on and so on. Jonas seems to be the only one without any data, and he feels the strange urge to cry or just lay down and take a nap.

Maybe it’s just the area he’s chosen to start with. Maybe he just picked a bad patch of soil. Maybe if he moves somewhere else he’ll have some luck.

With a glance over his shoulder towards his teammates, where they’re all relatively clustered on the eastern side of the Valley, Jonas starts walking off to the southwest. There’s an outcropping of huge, jagged rocks in the distance, no more than a half a mile away, and it’s towards that that he sets off, scanning the ground as he goes.

The sun has passed its highest peak of the day and is beginning its slow descent to the west when Jonas reaches the rocks. They’re massive and pockmarked, porous like limestone, and Jonas wonders what could have created all those thousands of tiny holes. Water? Some unknown chemical? Or perhaps these rocks just form that way, following some crystalline structure that’s unknown to him and his fellows.

Regardless, he follows one of the rocks around its base and finds that they form a sort of stone pillar forest. The purple columns continue off into the distance a ways, some broken and halved while others reach up towards the sky. It reminds him of the Badlands, and the time he’d gone camping there with his university’s geology club so he could study the plants of that arid landscape. They’d been bountiful and beautiful then, all different shades of golden brown and verdant green; maybe this spot will be lucky for him.

He gets to work recreating his grid scheme, working on his hands and knees as he combs over every inch of the ground. It’s hard work, and his back aches as he hunches over the soil. Despite the passing of midday the air is still warm like an oven; in no time he’s a sweaty mess again, his curls sticking to his forehead inside of his helmet. Lord, what he wouldn’t give for a breeze or a breath of fresh air.

He sits back on his heels and blinks the sweat out of his eyes. From his crewmembers’ spot he’s invisible, hidden inside the beginning of the rock forest. Hannah had said the atmosphere was safe, hadn't she? And she should know, with years of experience as an extraterrestrial meteorologist under her belt. So there’d be nothing wrong with taking his helmet off, just for a moment. Just so he could wipe his forehead clean and take a few deep breaths.

He glances over his shoulder for a few long seconds, like a criminal keeping a nervous eye out for the police. But no one comes over; no one is there to see him. He steels his nerves and lifts his hands to his neck, resting his gloved fingers on the locks holding his helmet on. Just a small breathe, that’s all he needs…

The locks click as he undoes them, and then he's lifting the helmet up and off, and he’s sighing in relief as a light wind washes over his damp skin. The air seems completely normal, no different than on Earth, and it’s a welcomed change after suit-air. He closes his eyes and basks in the feeling of the sunlight on his face, a feeling that’s hard to come by out in space.

That’s when he feels it.

That tingling, itching sensation that creeps through his veins and sets the little hairs covering his arms on edge. That feeling that makes his stomach drop and his blood run cold, a clamminess settling over his body despite the heat of the day.

That feeling of being _watched_.

A shiver runs down his spine as his eyes fly open, his head whipping from side to side as he tries to find who could possibly be watching him. He doesn’t see anyone, though; he’s just as alone as he’s ever been.

Then why is his skin crawling and his heart hammering against his rib cage?

He lifts his helmet to put it back on but, before he can slide it over his head, he hears--just for a brief, brief moment--a soft clicking noise. Jonas freezes completely, his eyes wide and his breathing stopped. His head actually starts to hurt as he strains to listen, trying to catch that sound again, trying to see if he can figure out what it was or where it came from. Several moments pass in what feels like an eternity to Jonas, and right when he’s about to let his guard down he hears it again.

He turns to look to his left, off further into the stone maze. The clicking had come from that direction, gentle and faint. Jonas’ mind races through a thousand thoughts and possibilities in the span of a second. Could there be life on this planet? Could he have accidentally stumbled upon it? Could he have finally just cracked?

He quickly pulls his helmet back on and locks it into place before pushing himself up onto his feet. Automatically, instinctively, he reaches for the intercom button on the arm-panel of his Ether-Suit, ready to call for backup. But, for some, dumb, stupid reason, he freezes.

He doesn’t press the button.

They’re the first people to ever walk on this planet. Everything here is new and unknown. He has the chance to look upon something with the certainty that he is the first human being ever to do so. That prospect calls to the scientist within him, to that spark that feeds on discovery and knowledge. Before he can think better of it he finds himself creeping slowly forward, towards the direction of the clicking. A horrible idea, really, but what’s science without a little risk?

He flattens himself against one of the rocks and inches along it, rounding the corner towards a new open pocket of the outcropping. On the ground in front of him he can see the shadows of the rocks that make up the next clearing, the light from the setting sun casting them in sharp relief on the purple dirt. He’s almost there. Just a few more steps and he’ll walk out into the grove. He’s sweating harder than before, biting his lower lip so hard it hurts. Five more steps. Four. Three. Tw--

A shadow darts across the dark panorama, a large shape that moves quick as lightning. Jonas nearly screams and, in a moment of adrenaline-fueled bravery (stupidity), he jumps around the corner and into the clearing only to find…

Nothing.

There’s nothing here. No darting shapes, no clicking beasts, and most definitely no plants.

Jonas stands there as his heartbeat struggles to calm itself and lets out a weak giggle. He really _must_ be losing his mind. Space can do that to a person; maybe he should ask Lewis to do a psych eval on him.

After he walks the perimeter of this newest clearing, just to reassure himself that there’s nothing hiding there out of sight, he turns back towards where he’d come from and starts walking to his grid. It’s been a long day, and he really should get back to the main group. The sun will set soon and they don’t want to be outside in the dark. Besides, Hannah is making a real home cooked dinner tonight, and--

Jonas actually does let out a scream this time as he reaches his his roped off grid, stumbling back and tripping over an uneven patch of ground to fall on his ass. There, laying in the center square of his work grid, is a _thing_. He quickly presses the intercom button, not even bothering to try and control the shake in his voice. “Guys! G--guys, please come here, right now, I’m in the rock patch to the southwest, and--.... And…. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something here, and--”

Sydney cuts him off, calm and assertive. “Jonas? Ok. Just stay where you are. We’ll find your suit on the GPS and come to you. Don’t panic, ok? We’re on our way.”

Jonas can’t even respond, just nods dumbly even though they can’t see him. He knows he should stay still and quiet on the ground where he landed, wait until his team arrives before he dares move a muscle, but… Curiosity is a damned hard thing to ignore.

With trepidation and a knowledge of his infinite stupidity Jonas shifts onto his hands and knees and crawls towards the edge of his grid. The thing doesn’t move, doesn’t react, so Jonas keeps going until he’s at the outermost square. He cranes his neck to get a better look, The thing turns out to be some sort of… Furball with legs. Six legs. Spindly, crooked legs that end with dull, rounded points. Its fur--or at least, what Jonas presumes to be fur--is the same sort of dusty lilac as the ground, with large white eyes situated on the side closest to Jonas. Something is oozing out of it onto the ground below, something electric blue and thick dripping from long gashes on its underbelly. Jonas’ eyebrows furrow and his forehead creases. Blood?

Behind him a rock shifts and tumbles down a pillar, startling him something awful and causing him to jump around onto his feet. There, in the shadows of a jagged split in a nearby rock, are two gleaming eyes staring out at him. Two amber eyes, bright and almost human.

Jonas’ mouth falls open dumbly, and his mind struggles to process what he’s seeing. Before he can, another noise comes from the northeast, the sound of running feet. Voices break across the intercom, all of them calling his name. Jonas glances over his shoulder as his team members run into the rocky outcrop and make a beeline for him. Lewis is already preparing a medkit, Sydney has her gun drawn, Madison is on the verge of tears, but Jonas doesn’t care. He looks back towards the crevice to seek those eyes out again but they’re gone. Whatever had been in there--whatever had deposited that dead thing in the middle of his work--has disappeared.

Jonas feels numb with shock. Sydney is the first to reach his side, spouting off a whole list of queries, reaching out a hand to shake Jonas gently, Behind them the team has found the alien creature; there’s exclamations of surprise, excitement, fear, disgust, the whole spectrum, but it all boils down to one question that Sydney keeps repeating over and over. “Jonas, what the hell _happened_?”

And Jonas, with wide eyes and a familiar thrill of excitement coursing through his system, finally manages to say, “I don’t think we’re alone.”


	2. Close Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "HEY WHAT'S THAT THING AND FOLLOW UP QUESTION CAN I BANG IT"- Jonas Wagner, at some point, probably

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOWWWWWWWWW I DID ITTTTTTT YAY MEEEEEE second chapter y'all lets hope i can make it to nUMBER THREE
> 
> im a thirsty little flower, you have to water me with your comments, not your pee (https://me.me/i/fucking-facebook-thirsty-flowers-318627 look, im not a weird pee goblin)
> 
> s/o to thebermuda for kicking my butt into gear for this fic and for being my NUMBER ONE BETA she's rad as hell
> 
> LE and all its contents belongs to smokeplanet
> 
> talk to me about LE on my tumblr (therecognitionscene) or twitter (spentgladiatior1) and lets discuss the properties of alien diccs

The next day Jonas finds another dead creature lying beside the first, a thick puddle of congealed bluish blood marring the otherwise pristine setup of Grid B.

He sighs and looks over the small lifeless bodies with dismay, all traces of the excitement he’d felt the day before having dissipated overnight. Everyone else’s work zones were left completely untouched, with no unpleasant little surprises waiting for them first thing in the morning. And isn’t this just his luck? To be targeted by whatever unknown alien life-forms inhabit this planet? He can only guess at what the presentation of the corpses could mean, what the aliens might be trying to convey to them (him), and it takes an enormous amount of effort not to picture the horse-head scene from  _ The Godfather. _

But the longer Jonas stares, the more he sees that horse-head.

Sydney comes up behind him and claps a hand on his shoulder, startling him out of his reveries. “Congrats, Joey. Looks like you’re the chosen one.”

He groans, tipping his helmeted head to the side until it clinks onto the shoulder of Syd’s Ether-Suit. “Great. Just what I wanted to happen. You know,  _ this  _ is why I study plants. This right here. They don’t…. Eat things. Well… I mean. Some of them do. But they don’t go around leaving their mess in other people’s hard work!”

The twins stand there for a moment, looking at the grisly pile, before Sydney lets out a chipper, “Well! Guess there’s nothing to it but to do it, huh? Just move those little buggers to the side, Mads will come by and scoop them up so she can start cataloguing them.” 

She looks around the rocky outcrop then, seemingly at ease as she surveys the scene, but Jonas can sense the sharpness of her stare, the tension held subtly in her frame. Sydney is on the defensive, unwilling to write this off as just some random encounter. That’s what makes her such a good captain, Jonas thinks. She’s always planning ahead for any possible outcome, the safety of her team always her number one priority. Jonas feels a tad bit better knowing that she’s on the lookout. “The rest of us are going to be working closer to Grid B today, so we’ll all be nearby. Just in case you hear anymore weird clicking.” She laughs and nudges her shoulder against Jonas’.

He blushes and wishes he had his favorite old baseball cap on so he could tug the brim down over his eyes. Everyone could see the dead creatures for themselves, but the strange clicking he’d heard had been harder to convince them of. Neil, the ship’s pilot, had straight out laughed at Jonas when he’d tried to describe the noise to them, a derisive and mean sound that had cut through the astrobotanist like a hot knife through butter. What’s worse is how  _ Carmen _ had laughed too, giggling at him quietly behind her hand as Neil had drawled on. “Really, Wagner?  _ Clicking _ ? Are you sure you weren’t just hearing the sound of your own knees knocking together?” 

Neil had been leaning against the table in the ship’s lounge, all confidence and bravado, while Jonas had tried his best to sink into the floor and disappear. “ _ Honestly _ , as if some alien would just sit there and  _ click  _ at you. Did you think it was too  _ scared _ to try and attack you? Think it was afraid of big, bad Joey-woey?”

Ever since they’d been assigned to the same crew, the two of them fresh out of university and eager to escape the gravitational pull of Earth, Neil has been nothing but a jerk to Jonas. Sydney offered to kick him out of their team when she’d been promoted to captain, but Jonas had told her not to bother. Neil is the best pilot there is these days, and--despite the fact that he’s a royal bully--they’re lucky to have him. The last thing Jonas wants is to jeopardize the strength of their team because of his hurt feelings.

Luckily, though, Sydney is always there to back him up. “It probably caught sight of your ugly mug and didn’t want to get any closer,” she had shot back, raising an eyebrow and leveling Neil with a cool stare. “Listen. If Jonas says he heard something then he heard it. We’re going to work off that presumption until we can get more information. Understand?”

And if Jonas had felt a bit of smug satisfaction as Neil had lowered his head and mumbled “Understood,” well, who could blame him?

“I really did hear it, you know,” he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest and toeing at a loose chunk of purple rock.

Sydney laughs and reaches out to ruffle his hair, a familiar and comforting gesture even if all she ends up doing is rubbing the top of his helmet. “I believe you, Joey, don’t worry. I’m just giving you a hard time. As the older twin, it’s my job, you know. And I take my responsibilities  _ very _ seriously.” 

Jonas rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever,  _ captain _ . You’re gonna help me move these things at least, right? As part of your ‘ _ responsibilities’ _ ?”

“Syd?” Carmen’s voice crackles over the intercom then, as sweet and musical as it always is. “Hey, Syd? I’m about halfway through the weapons diagnostics. Most everything seems intact and functioning, but it looks like the ship’s tertiary particle cannon took some damage when we entered the atmosphere.”

“Copy that,” Sydney replies. “I’ll come back up and give you a hand with repairs.” Carmen gives an affirmative and Sydney shrugs, not looking the least bit sorry or sheepish as she starts backing away from Jonas. “Ooooo, rough luck, Joey. You heard her, Carmen reaaaally needs my help. Good luck with those dead bodies though! I’ll be with you in spirit!” And with that, she turns on her heel and hurries off, leaving Jonas to deal with his unsavory presents on his own.

* * *

If he’d been hoping to have another run-in with the clicking alien, Jonas ends up sorely disappointed that day. After he moves the bodies and Madison collects them, eager to start dissecting them to figure out how they work, Joey spends the rest of the daylight hours scouring the plum earth for seemingly non-existent signs of flora. He finishes Grid B before breaking for lunch, and starts work on Grid C further inside the loose maze of rocks.

At mid-afternoon, when the sun is angled down directly onto his face, he takes the risk and removes his helmet again, sitting very still when he does so and straining to listen. There’s no clicking, though, no shifting of loose dirt or gravel to suggest that his visitor might be back. Just the familiar sounds of his crew members going about their own work beyond the walls of the outcropping. 

In fact, over the rest of the week there are no further signs of  _ anything  _ strange. The third day in the Valley finds Jonas’ grids untouched and empty, devoid of any macabre offerings, and he wonders if maybe he  _ did _ imagine the clicking noise. Maybe those dead creatures simply  _ died _ . Been crawling over his work, minding their own business, just to keel over of natural causes. Sure, it’d be a bit of a coincidence if two of those same lifeforms just happened to croak in the same exact spot, but Jonas knows that coincidences are more commonplace than one might think out in the vast reaches of space.

Regardless, by the end of their first week on X-278A, Jonas and the others have largely let their guards down. Sydney seems to be the only one who still maintains a wary outlook every morning when they set out from the ship, but when Jonas eventually insists that he doesn’t need the team to stay as close to him as they have been, she doesn't offer up any argument. That’s how Jonas, on the seventh day of their expedition, finds himself a good deal away from his teammates, wandering through the loosely clustered stone pillars and only half paying attention to where he’s going. 

Thus far all his searching and testing and hoping have been for naught. Despite initial planetary scans and computer-run simulations that indicated a high likelihood for the presence of plant-matter, Jonas hasn’t found  _ anything _ . He wonders vaguely if he should just give up his search and use the remainder of their month-long stay as a mini-vacation; they’ve been hopping from job to job, planet to planet, solar system to solar system for so long now that he’s not quite sure what he would even  _ do _ with some free-time, but the idea sounds nice enough.

The natural curves and twists of the rocky labyrinth eventually spit Jonas out in a small clearing, empty save for a few stray chunks of purple rock that must have fallen from the surrounding pillars. The result of seismic activity, probably, though none of their instruments have picked up even the slightest tremor since their arrival on the planet.

On the opposite side of the clearing, maybe ten feet away from where Jonas stands, is a smooth cliff-face formed by the north-eastern wall of the valley; in the bright light of the afternoon sun, the rock takes on a warm maroonish hue, a color that Jonas thinks is absolutely stunning. He walks up to the wall and presses his hand flat against it. Even through the thick fabric of his glove he can feel the heat radiating outwards, conjuring images in his mind of long-tailed lizards and thickly coiled snakes lounging in the rays of the sun, heavy-lidded and lazy with warmth. 

He’s feeling pretty lazy himself, and wonders idly if Sydney would be mad at him for taking a nap out here in the open. Right as he’s starting to look for a comfortable spot to rest in for awhile his gaze falls onto a jagged shadow cutting vertically down the valley wall. He frowns, trying to determine if it’s just a product of the light hitting the uneven, craggy rockface, or if it's something real, something tangible; he makes his way along the wall, stepping around small boulders and tiny gullies until he reaches the shadow. With squinted eyes he leans forward and is hit with a thrill of excitement when he realizes that the shadow is actually a crooked lightning bolt of a crack running nearly the height of the wall. 

It’s just wide enough that he can work his hand inside, then his lower arm, then upper arm, until he’s in up to his shoulder. He gropes around inside the slit; it feels like it gets a bit wider after the initial squeeze, wide enough that he thinks he might be able to work himself through it if he were to remove the added thickness of his suit. A dumb idea, but if scientists ignored every dumb idea they ever had, Jonas seriously doubts the human race would be where they are today.

Ten minutes later and he’s gone through the lengthy process of removing his Ether-Suit, setting all the pieces carefully to the side atop the relatively flat surface of a halved boulder. He feels infinitely lighter without the bulk and weight of it surrounding his body, stretching his arms and legs and enjoying the reclaimed flexibility, but he quickly comes to miss the protection it offered from the heat of the sun. A sweat breaks out across his forehead, the dampness growing under his arms and in the folds of his joints. The cool shade of the slim tunnel seems all the more inviting now, and he tugs at the synthetic fibers of his regulatory one-piece suit as he steps up to the jagged crack. 

This is it. Potentially the stupidest decision he's ever made, and yet… He feels more excited than scared as he stares at the entrance. 

He begins to squeeze his way into the opening, shuffling sideways and sucking in the softness of his stomach as he does. It's a tight fit, and there's a moment of blind panic where he thinks he's gone and got himself stuck. But with a bit of deep breathing and strategic wiggling he manages to free his hips from the clutches of the tunnel and push forward. No sooner has he freed himself than he stumbles forward as the passage opens up suddenly, throwing him off balance so that he goes tumbling down sideways to land on his back with an 'oof'. 

“Ouch,” he groans, sitting up and rubbing at the back of his head, tender from thumping down against the hard ground. “Dumb tunnel.” He pushes himself to his feet, dusting off his suit as he does, and turns away from the slivered light spilling in through the opening. Beyond the reaches of the sun extends an inky black darkness, seemingly impenetrable and infinite. He crouches down and scoops up a pebble, lobbing it off into the darkness. It hits the ground a ways away and rolls noisily for a few seconds before coming to a stop. The tunnel continues, then. Apparently at an incline, too. 

Without much hesitation he presses down against the small node built into the left shoulder of his suit. With a soft whirring noise the built-in lights that line the outside of each limb come to life, a softly glowing pale yellow color that helps illuminate Jonas’ surroundings. Lit up like a torch, he can see about ten feet in front of him, just enough that he feels he can safely navigate the tunnel. He has auxiliary lights stowed in the soles of his boots that he can pull out if the need arises, and that knowledge comforts him as he presses his hand to the wall and starts following it down, down, down. 

* * *

He's not sure how long he's been walking for when the gentle decline of the tunnel eventually opens up into a small antechamber. Two paths branch off into more darkness, one to his right and one to his left. For a moment he stands there, deliberating on which way to go, but ultimately decides to follow the left path. He's always been bad with directions, and he hopes that he'll be able to remember the twists and turns he continues to take as he delves further into the earth.

Four branches later he steps into a chamber so large that his suit can't properly illuminate it. He lifts one booted foot and digs the embedded light stick out, cracking it and giving it a good shake until it's glowing brightly. He holds it up in front of him and gasps. 

He's stumbled into a large, hollow cavern, the ceiling of which is so high that it remains shrouded in darkness. On the broad expanse of wall opposite Jonas are pockets of darker shadows; Jonas squints at them, confused, and takes a few steps further in towards the center of the chamber. The wall is… Pockmarked. Riddled with wide, yawning holes bored directly into the rock face. Like a beehive, Jonas thinks, his heart thumping hard against his chest. Like honeycomb, a formation that doesn't just  _ happen  _ back on Earth. It needs to be created, manufactured, constructed by some being or force. Jonas’ mind immediately goes back to the buzzing he'd heard, the dead creatures they'd found. Could there be something on this planet capable of creating this sight?

Just then there comes a noise from one of the upper holes, the sound of gravel shifting slightly, as if there's something up there moving around very slowly and carefully. Jonas freezes, his pupils wide in the weak artificial light of his suit and glow stick. This is it: the defining moment. Does he turn and run, or does he steel his nerves and seek out the source of the faint noise?

Despite his better judgement and the voice in his head screaming at him to turn tail and flee, Jonas starts creeping forward with cautious, careful steps, never once taking his eyes off the many holes looming in front of him. They're close enough that he thinks he could scale the wall, using the openings as hand and footholds. When he puts a foot in the first hole, situated maybe a foot off the ground and wide enough that he could crawl in it if he wanted, he finds it solid, able to hold his weight. He fastens the glow stick to the front of his suit and begins his climb, slow and steady. 

By the time he's about fifteen feet off the ground he starts questioning the merits of this decision. His arms are burning with the strain and his legs feel like jelly; he pauses, clinging to the wall, to catch his breath, tipping his head back and looking up at the endless darkness above. What is he  _ doing _ ? Chasing after a phantom sound that he probably just  _ imagined _ hearing? He's cursing his own stupidity, preparing to start the descent back to the ground, when….

_ Click _ .  _ Clickclickclick _ . 

There it is. The clicking noise from their first day on X-278A. It's coming from a bit further up, maybe another three rows of combs above where he is. A surge of adrenaline washes through his system, his curiosity a burning flame in his chest. With a renewed vigor he starts climbing again, his labored breathing loud but not loud enough to drown out the now constant stream of clicks emanating from within one of the holes. 

He's almost there, one more row, his mind strangely numb as he nears the unknown. This is what he's here for, for discovery. For science. For  _ himself _ . He needs to know that there's an infinite universe beyond Earth, that there's more than what they've already discovered and what they've already categorized. 

His hand reaches the opening of the clicking hole, he hauls himself up, and--

There are the eyes, the same ones he’d seen looking out at him from the far edge of the rocky outcrop. Big, unblinking, the color of grass as it dies in the sweltering heat of a late summer, both familiarly human and yet undeniably alien all at the same time. 

It startled Jonas so badly that he cries out, a loud yelp that cracks through the silence. The clicking dies off immediately and Jonas, in his fear, loses his grip on the wall. He can feel himself falling, down down down, and he's struck with the irony of the infallible pull of gravity that's followed him all the way out to this distant solar system. There's a large dark shape that throws itself out of the hole after him, something like long, spindly arms reaching out towards his body as he plummets towards the ground, but they never connect. Jonas hits the floor with a thud, his head cracking back against the purple floor, blinding pain ringing through his body. 

His vision starts to go dark at the corners as the inky black tendrils of unconsciousness begin to creep into his mind. His mouth opens but no sound comes out; the hazel eyes get closer and closer, staring directly down at him. The last thought he has before he succumbs to the void is just how pretty the eyes of his soon-to-be-killer are, how emotive and bright. Then, there’s nothing but darkness. Darkness, and the numbing knowledge that this is it. 

He’s going to die. 


	3. i need cool names for these chapters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonas chills with an alien. it's gr8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOY WHO COULD HAVE THOUGHT THIS WOULD TURN INTO ALIEN AU SLOWBURN HAHAHAH I SURE AS HELL DIDNT LOLOLOLOLOLOL
> 
> thanks again to thebermuda who is my beta, my kick in the ass when im being lazzzzy, and a rad writer
> 
> LE and all its content belongs to smokeplanet.

The first thing Jonas becomes conscious of is a knot of pain that’s settled itself at the base of his head, right where the aching column of his spine meets his skull. It throbs like a second heartbeat, low and dull, and draws a ragged groan out from between his lips. If this is what being dead feels like, he’s decided that it’s a pretty shitty deal, and he’d much rather settle for the numbness of oblivion, thanks.

But no. He’s not dead. When he sucks in a shallow breath he can feel the rasp of the cold air against the soft tissue of his lungs; when he flexes his limbs there’s a soreness that’s buried itself deep in his muscles and makes him feel leaden. He sighs, eyes still closed and his mind struggling to sort through the demands of his injured body. Honestly, dying would have probably been easier, he thinks grimly, forcing his protesting body to obey so he can roll onto his side and go fetal. Certainly easier than waking up in some dark cave on an alien planet with a body that's more likely than not half-paralyzed by now. 

Really, just his luck.

The easy thing to do would be to close his eyes and succumb to his fate, but he's not ready to give up so soon, not with Syd’s voice mentally berating him as he struggles closer and closer to consciousness. He can just imagine her exasperated tone, her ‘tsks’ and ‘really, Joey?’s. If Syd were in his position, she’d already be up on her feet and looking for a way back to the ship. So that’s just what Jonas is going to have to do, too.

With a Herculean effort he cracks open his eyes, his gaze  unfocused. He doesn’t need perfect sight to notice that something is different, though: where he’d expected to see nothing but darkness he finds that he's bathed in a soft, bluish-white light. He frowns, curious but concerned, and uses shaking arms to push himself into an upright sitting position. He digs his knuckles into his eyes, rubs at them roughly, blinks a few times, and then gasps as he looks around.

He’s no longer in the large, pockmarked cavern where he’d taken his fateful plunge. Instead he’s  in a small, round cave, the ceiling a mere ten feet or so above his head. A tunnel leads off into blackness to his left, narrow before opening up to the roundness of the central chamber--like the entrance to an igloo-- and to his right the ground tapers off into a gently sloshing pool of dark liquid. But it’s the walls of the chamber that really catch his attention, that have his mouth falling open dumbly and his eyes going wide.

Growing all over the cave are strange, beautiful, luminescent  _ plants _ . They pulse gently with that bluish-white light, the glow seeming to travel through their leaves and fronds and veins like blood; Jonas can actually track the path of the light as it flows through their internal systems, a discovery that thrills him to no end. Some of them even look vaguely familiar: he can see in their shapes the same geometries that make up the broad leaves of  _ alocasias _ , the puffed up fluted knobs of  _ peruvianus monstrosus _ , the tight curls of  _ moraea tortilis _ . 

But for as many shapes and patterns that Jonas can recognize and connect with the plants of his home planet, there are dozens more that are wholly alien even to his trained eye. 

Near the edge of the pond are pods shaped like starfish, long, quivering tendrils extending from their centers and reaching up into the air like grasping hands. Lining the perimeter of the room are intermittent clumps of small cubic fronds, their soft edges bent impossibly into hard 90 degree angles. Jonas wonders if they're still soft and malleable, or if they've somehow managed to grow crystalline. 

The ones that really catch his eye, though, out of the whole bizarre collection, are the lotus-like blossoms that are seemingly  _ hovering _ in the air, gossamer threads hanging down from their undersides like dew-kissed spiderwebs to provide ephemeral connections to the stone below them. There are maybe a dozen or so of these larger specimens dotting the walls, their glow much brighter and appealing than their smaller kin. 

“So this is where you’ve all been hiding,” he murmurs, his voice soft with awe as he gazes around in wonder. The lights pulse softly, as if responding to the vibrations of his voice, and he breaks into a smile, his pain and fear temporarily forgotten. Finally he’s in his element here on this alien planet. He doesn’t have any of his tools with him--they’re still out by his grids, left scattered on the ground where he’d abandoned them earlier--but he can improvise. He’ll go bootless if it means storing a few specimens in the safety of the thick rubber shoes.

He grunts as he rises onto his feet, brushing away the dirt and dust that’s collected in a fine sheen on his suit. The cave walls are craggy and uneven, with naturally-forming shelves and hollows marring their surfaces. The plants cling stubbornly despite it all, finding purchase wherever they can and thriving. Jonas has always admired the tenacity of plants, the will they possess to live and carry on even when their own environment is seemingly working against them. They’ve inspired him to carry on in much the same fashion ever since he was a child. 

As he limps towards the nearest wall it vaguely occurs to him that he should be more concerned about how he'd moved from one chamber to another while unconscious, but the importance of that question pales against the prospect of discovery. There's nothing else in the room with him, no signs of life beyond the plants, and therefore no reason to worry about trivial details like that yet. Until some alien beast looks him dead in the eye, he’ll presume his relative safety.

He reaches a hand out toward a gently quivering, curled frond, curious about its texture, but hesitates. Touching an unknown specimen with bare skin is not the smartest idea, but he’d left his heavy-duty gloves out in the rock maze with his suit, and there’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to find this cave again if he leaves now. He chews on his lower lip for a moment as he battles between indecision, fear, and burning,  _ burning _ curiosity. Finally, with a quick darting look to his right and left--as if  Madison might be there, waiting to tell him off for his stupidity--he closes the small distance and catches the tip of the frond between his thumb and forefinger.

Jonas becomes aware of several things all at once. The plant he’s gripping is cold, as if it’s covered in a slick layer of frost. The skin of the frond is dry to the touch, though, smooth and glossy; like the light, the cold seems to be radiating outwards from  _ inside  _ the plant. Then, right as his mind is registering the chill against his fingerpads, his eyes catch something glinting faintly in the blue glow: a small cloud of particles, shot up into the air from the central bulb of the plant he’s touching. His eyes widen and he has just enough time to wonder if he’s going to die if he inhales that stuff when he picks up on the soft clicking noise that fills the chamber.

He claps a hand over his mouth and nose and stumbles backwards away from the plant and its unknown spores, his eyes wide and gaze darting around. He knows what the clicking means by now: hazel eyes and something tall, foreign and more than a little frightening. His back hits the opposite wall unexpectedly and he lets out a cry, a high sound that he muffles with knuckles in his mouth. Something scratches against the rocky edge of the pool and he whips his head to the right,  looking for his unknown companion. There’s nothing there, but the liquid is rippling as if it’d been disturbed. 

Jonas’ heart is racing, his pulse so loud in his own ears that he can barely even hear the clicking anymore. Maybe if he moves slowly and carefully enough, he can inch his way along the wall and reach the opening of the dark tunnel. Not an ideal plan, but he likes to think his chances will be better on the run than trapped in here like a sitting duck. 

With bated breath he starts the seemingly endless journey, his eyes now locked on that dark, round portal as he shuffles sideways inch by inch. It may just be his fevered imagination acting up, but the plants seem to be pulsing brighter now, their light casting sharp shadows across the floor and walls. He’s almost halfway there, only eight feet or so separating him from his chance at escape; he just wishes the scrape of his boots wasn’t so loud, that his breathing wasn’t so raspy and fast, that he could risk pulling his hands away from his mouth and nose to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.

Just a few more feet. Almost there. He can feel a soft breeze now blowing in from the tunnel; if he can follow the airflow he might find a way out. Nearly…there…

“OW!”

Pain explodes across Jonas’ right temple, sharp and sudden. He forgets about the spores and claps a hand above his brow, his stomach flipping when he feels the warmth of blood under his fingers. By his feet lays a rather jagged chunk of stone that must have fallen down from the ceiling. Without thinking twice about it, Jonas looks up.

And very nearly passes out again.

There, clinging to the roof of the cave directly above him, is a… _ thing _ . It  _ almost _ looks human, with the same basic anatomy and features, a torso with legs and a head and four arms and wings and….

Jonas lets out a scream that gurgles and dies off before it even leaves his throat. Four arms. Wings. Antennae? A mouth full of sharp teeth that catch the light of the plants. And those hazel eyes that had been staring down at him as he’d sunk into unconsciousness, bright and startling. 

Human, but not human.

Jonas slides down the wall to the ground, his legs feeling more like jelly than bone and skin, and tries to make himself seem as small as possible. The only saving grace of this whole situation is that the alien looks as shocked at being seen as Jonas feels at seeing it, though even that revelation does little calm Jonas’ nerves or make him feel better about being trapped with a monster.

His mind is racing desperately through his options, but he’s cut short by a throb of pain from his temple. 

“Ow,” he whimpers, clamping the flat of his palm over the sluggishly bleeding wound. Above him the creature rustles its wings almost restlessly and clicks, but Jonas tries his best to ignore it as the rivulet of crimson blood begins to drip from the ridge of his brow down his face. He needs a bandage, something he can press against the cut to stymie the flow, but medical supplies are in short demand in the middle of this chamber. He’d rip a strip from his suit if he could, but the synthetic material is strong and tear-resistant. 

There’s a soft whooshing noise and a quiet thump. Jonas looks up from his bloodied hands to find himself actually, literally, 100% face-to-god-awful-face with the alien, who’d dropped down and landed in a crouch right in front of Jonas. Jonas chokes on a noise, his eyes opened so wide he’s surprised they haven’t popped out of his head yet, but the creature simply lets out a sharp click, a frown--a frown?--tugging at the edges of its mouth. 

Jonas watches in a daze as two of the alien’s hands, the upper set, reach out toward him and catch his wrists. It’s so much bigger than he is, taller and lankier; it’s able to overlap its fingers around Joey’s wrists, and he wonders deliriously if it’s about to snap his bones.

But no. It simply lifts Joey’s hands up closer to its eyes, peering at the blood on his palms with that same frown on its face. It clicks several times, and Jonas almost laughs out loud, feeling the tiniest bit hysterical: it sounds just like Sydney when she tuts at him, berating him for being careless or reckless. For some reason--he doesn’t really know why--he feels a bit sheepish. 

“It’s not my fault,” he grumbles under his breath. “You were the one who knocked that stone loose.”

The alien arches an eyebrow at Jonas and lets out a hiss; Jonas flinches, but then it rolls its eyes and releases his wrists. His hands fall back into his lap and he hopes--prays--that the creature is done its inspection. A useless hope, really, because almost as soon as it breaks contact it reinitiates it, this time reaching up and cupping Jonas’ face with two big hands. The other two work on brushing his hair away from the wound, dragging his curly locks out of the sticky gash and pushing them out of the way. It leans in closer, its eyes squinting; Jonas can feel a puff of air hit his face, though the alien, disconcertingly, has no discernible nose, and there’s no visible rise and fall of its chest.

He’s about to pull away from the alien’s touch when a tongue--long, tapered, and neon turquoise--slips out from between the creature’s thin lips. Jonas watches in rapt fear and fascination as the slick tip stretches out towards his forehead, swiping over the valley of his cut and licking up a swath of tacky blood as it does so. Jonas’ mouth falls open in horror, but if the alien notices how rigid he’s suddenly grown, it pays him no mind. Just holds him there in place and drags the smooth, wet muscle of its tongue along his wound again and again until it’s cleaned up all his blood.

Jonas won’t let himself admit that the act is comforting, or the sensation strangely pleasant.

It clicks in apparent satisfaction, sacrificing the hold of one hand so it can reach out to a nearby fluted plant and break it off at the stem. A viscous gel oozes out of the broken frond and drips to the floor, thick as molasses; the alien catches some of the juice on the first three fingers of a second hand and, with a touch that is altogether too tender, rubs it onto Joey’s cut like a salve.

The goop is cool against his skin, washing over the subtle burn of injury like a wave and taking with it all traces of pain almost instantly. He lets out a soft sigh of relief, slumping slightly as  tension seeps out of his body along with the ache. 

“That’s amazing,” he murmurs, eyeing the stalk that the alien is holding. “How did you know it does that? Do you use it too? I wonder what sort of molecular makeup it has, and if it would work on something bigger than just a cut, and--”

He cuts himself off abruptly; the alien is staring at him, with no idea what Jonas could possibly be saying, and a soft smile on its face. Heat instantly flares up in Joey’s cheeks, and then embarrassment, and then frustration, because of  _ course _ he would get flustered by an alien. 

Even though his wound has been tended to, the creature doesn’t remove its hands. In fact, its thumb starts stroking along the curve of Jonas’ cheekbone, like an unconscious, automatic action. Jonas blinks, his heart thrumming hard against his ribcage. Before he can think better of it he lifts his own hand up and brings trembling fingers to the alien’s chin. 

A few short strands of fur or hair are growing there, like days-old stubble, and this time Jonas can’t hold back a soft laugh. His brows crease with wonder and frustration at this  _ thing _ as he mimics it and cups its cheek, accidentally smearing the blood from his palm onto its tan and dusky skin. A deep rumble sounds from the alien’s chest at that, like the purring of some great beast, and Jonas audibly swallows as its eyes go half-lidded.

With slow, deliberate movements the alien turns its head and presses its mouth to the heel of Jonas’ left palm. “Like a kiss,” he blurts out unthinkingly, his entire body on fire. The alien simply clicks once, twice, and then opens its mouth. With just the tip of its tongue it licks a small patch of skin clean right where Jonas’ palm meets the inside of his wrist and, with their gazes locked, sinks its wickedly sharp front teeth into the tender give of Joey’s skin.

And Jonas moans.

He doesn’t mean to, and later on when he’s laying in his bunk he’ll deny that he ever did, but he does. He  _ moans _ , low and throaty and needy. Droplets of fresh blood bead pool in the small puncture wounds, which the alien is surveying with an expression that is all too smug for Jonas’ tastes. That tongue comes out again and drags a thick layer of saliva over the pinpricks, something Jonas is sure isn’t sanitary but that he really can’t be bothered to care about right then. 

Large hands drop from Joey’s face to drag over the roundness of his shoulders. Pressing down with enough force that the alien can feel the shape and curve of his bones underneath its long fingers. One thumb seeks out his pulse point on his neck, rubbing over the gently throbbing patch. The plant is dropped and forgotten in lieu of groping at Jonas’ chest, the remains of the salve rubbing into the fabric of his suit as the alien grabs at the slight weight of his tits. 

With all four hands on him Jonas feels like he’s going to overload. There’s a dangerous moment where his mind nearly short-circuits, where he nearly succumbs to all the absolutely  _ wrong _ things he’s all of a sudden feeling, but he snatches at a moment of clarity and is able to pull himself out of whatever stupor this creature was putting him. 

“I--I have to go now!” he squeaks, pulling his hands back so he can start grabbing at the alien’s and pull them off his body. “I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, and I’m sure Syd is worried sick, s--so thank you very much for, um, the spit and the plant! Haha, this is so weird, um, okay, I--I really have to go.”

At his frantic pulling the alien sits back on its heels, a droll look on its face as Jonas scrambles to his feet and hurries to the tunnel’s entrance only to freeze. It watches as Jonas bounces on the balls of his feet before turning back to the alien quickly, biting at his lower lip. “Uh… I don’t…know…how to get back…”

They stare at each other blankly for a moment. Jonas’ cheeks are on fire. 

“Can you… I mean, I know you can’t understand me, but, ah…. Oh, heck this is hard, um… I--” He points to himself. “--have to go back--” He jabs his finger at the tunnel. “--to my crew. My ship. Out there. I have to go. Can you help me?” He points at the alien, then back to the tunnel, repeating the motion several times with a growing sort of desperation.

But then the alien clicks nonchalantly--how can this creature be so  _ smug _ all the time?-- and rises onto its own pronged feet. Standing up, it’s roughly seven feet tall, towering over Jonas’ meager five feet four inches, and the little astronaut gulps as it walks up to him and takes his hand with a low series of hums and clicks. Then, without any fanfare, it begins to lead Jonas into the darkness of the tunnel. He realizes too late that he failed to grab any specimens, and he looks over his shoulder with dismay as the glow of the plant room grows dimmer and dimmer.

He’s not sure how long he’s led through the tunnel system for. It could be mere minutes, but with the abnormally-warm hand of the alien gripping his own and commandeering all his attention, it’s hard to gauge. All he knows is that, eventually, they reach a gently rising incline that brings them up and out into the surface world once again. 

Night has fallen, and despite the billions of stars burning in the sky, a gloomy sort of darkness lays over the land like a blanket. Jonas groans quietly and tightens his grip on the alien’s hand. He’s terribly afraid of the dark, has been since he was a child, and being in the dark on an unknown world with absolutely no idea of where he is? Well, it definitely takes the cake for fear-inducing scenarios.

He keeps close to the alien’s side as they walk, stumbling along blindly beside his strange companion who seemingly has no issues traversing the darkened landscape. His eyes must be adjusted to it, Jonas thinks, peering sideways to try and see what he can of the creature. It must sense his stare: It turns its head to look at him, big eyes reflecting back the starlight, and it lets out a rumbling hum that sounds suspiciously like a laugh as it catches Jonas squinting at it. 

Jonas huffs and looks away quickly, wishing he could let go of the alien’s hand and make his own way through the night. But right then his foot catches on a rock and he trips, arms flailing as gravity threatens to pull him down face-first. He doesn’t fall, though; four arms, strong and sure, catch him and steady him, and Jonas lingers maybe just a second too long in their embrace before he steps away. “I--I’m fine,” he mumbles, and he’s sure the alien can see the pink riding high on his cheeks.

He hears them before he sees them: his crewmembers, all calling out his name with varying levels of worry and distress coloring their voices. 

“That’s my team!” he says, squeezing the alien’s hand in a rush of excitement before cupping both of his own hands around his mouth and yelling out,  “Guys! Guys, over here! I’m here! I’m okay!”

There’s a chorus of relieved noises from his distant team, and he can pick Syd’s voice out as she yells, “Just stay where you are! We’re coming for you, Joey!   


He’s breathless with his own sense of relief and excitement as he turns to look back at the alien, a smile on his face, but it isn’t there. Jonas looks around wildly, hardly able to believe his companion managed to sneak off without him noticing, but then Sydney and the others are rounding a boulder with flashlights and glow tubes, all rushing towards him and yelling at once.

He’s swept up into their collective embrace, fawned over and berated in equal parts, and led back to the ship. But the whole time they’re walking, the whole time he’s reassuring them that he truly is okay, he’s looking back over his shoulder and hoping for just one more glimpse of the creature that had helped him.

The inside of his left wrist throbs, and he hopes he’ll see the alien again.


End file.
